


thoughts in spite of righteousness

by basset_voyager



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Multi, Pre-OT3, Religion, queer everyone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-11 18:40:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4447382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/basset_voyager/pseuds/basset_voyager
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As a child, Karen likes church. She likes the singing, the minister’s soaring voice, and the little ginger cookies her mother always buys her on the way home. [Some vignettes on the law kids + religion]</p>
            </blockquote>





	thoughts in spite of righteousness

**Author's Note:**

> writing around Karen's Mysterious Past because it'll all get joss'd soon anyway
> 
> title's from a sufjan stevens song (what else?) "all good naysayers! speak up! or forever hold your peace!"

As a child, Karen likes church. She likes the singing, the minister’s soaring voice, and the little ginger cookies her mother always buys her on the way home. Every Sunday, she sits between her parents and finds patterns in the wood of the bench in front of them as the sermon washes over her. The stories are good – she likes Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead best. It’s like something that would be in a movie on TV late at night that her mother would scold her for watching, except everyone says that it really happened. Her father says that the story is about letting yourself be saved by faith. Karen isn’t really sure what that means, but she nods like she understands and keeps imagining zombie Lazarus groaning for brains.

**

In the church where Matt and his father go to Mass every Sunday, there’s a hallway behind the sacristy that leads to offices and the room in the basement for community meetings and after school programs. The kids like to play hide and seek there while all the adults are standing around drinking coffee after the service. One day, Matt slips into a storage room that’s usually locked, and it takes a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dusty light filtering through one small window on the top of the wall. He runs his fingers over the stacks of hymnbooks and candles on the shelves, pretending he’s an Egyptologist who’s discovered a secret tomb.

In the very back of the room, Matt finds a statue of the Virgin Mary that’s almost as tall as he is. Her eyes are cast downward in her usual gentle expression, and the paint that makes her veil blue is nearly all chipped away. He wonders why she’s in here and not somewhere where people can see her, but then he looks closer and realizes that she has no hands. Her arms reach out, but the outward-facing palms he’s so used to seeing aren’t there. For a second, he reaches out to touch her, but then thinks it might be wrong, especially because he just ate a brownie without washing his hands. Even in a storage room with chipped paint and no hands, his grandma would say that the Mother of God is still the Mother of God, right?

Less than a year later, Matt finds the door unlocked again as he scans the empty hallway with his stick. He listens for the sound of the dust settling on her head as she stands alone in the sun, frozen in prayer. This time, he runs his fingers over the stubs of her wrists, the porcelain folds of her dress. He touches her eyes.

**

Foggy’s parents have never been all that religious.

“Why don’t you go to church?” Brett asks him in sixth grade.

“Well, technically I’m Jewish, so that’s the first reason,” he says, “and secondly, my dad’s an atheist. We’ve been to temple, like, twice in my life and only because my mom’s parents dragged us.” Foggy’s dad is not an atheist, not really, but Foggy thinks it sounds cooler than _my dad sat me down and told me that since his mother died he’s really not up to grappling with God anymore_. 

Foggy sometimes wishes he had more in common with all the Irish Catholic families in the neighborhood. Catholicism makes even less sense to him than Judaism, but at least he’d be able to talk about getting confirmed or going to CCD with all the other kids. He does like, however, watching other people twitch when he says things like “Jesus Christ tap dancing on a cracker!” It’s a weird sort of power. He does it for revenge when people are nasty to him for not going to church like they do. 

Thinking about God makes Foggy think of death, and so he mostly tries not to. God is something adults understand and kids just parrot, as far as he can tell. He’d rather try to be a good person and take responsibility for himself. Just as soon as he figures out what that means.

**

Karen stops going to church in tenth grade. She expects a screaming match about it, but her mother just nods with tears in her eyes, as if Karen has just informed her of the death of some long-estranged friend. Her parents are divorced by then, her father living in Indianapolis in an apartment Karen only sees a couple of times. When Karen’s grandparents come for Christmas they spend most of the day giving Karen concerned looks, and Karen keeps hearing phrases like _acting out_ and _broken home_.

After Christmas break, Karen’s mom catches her coming home drunk from sneaking out to a party, and it’s only then that things explode. Karen doesn’t understand it; she’s only doing the exact same thing that every other kid in her school is doing, but her mother screams herself hoarse for a solid half an hour. She throws a plate, which is something Karen has never seen her do before. It makes Karen’s eyes fill with tears out of shock. She leaves Karen to clean up the pieces. 

“Your brother wouldn’t have done this,” she says. Karen bites her lip to keep from spitting back that there’s no way of knowing what her brother might have done. 

One of the neighbors calls to make sure that everything’s okay, and Karen’s mother apologizes for waking them. At school the next day, everyone stares at Karen, the way that kids do, not even trying to hide it. 

Karen stays late after basketball practice shooting hoops on her own. She thinks best on the court, even though she’s still trying to get over the disappointment of not being quite good enough to play college. With basketball, she can leave all her bullshit behind and focus on solving the problem in front of her. Besides, it’s the only thing she’s ever done that’s made people clap her on the shoulder and tell her she’s done something good. 

Karen takes her mother’s car and drives out to Martin’s Point with some stolen beers and her friend Monica in the passenger seat. They watch the sun come up and talk about the future. Monica wants to skip college and move to New York to be an actress or a photographer, and they spend hours fantasizing about the apartment she would have and the glamorous people she would meet there. Karen’s never been to New York, but she imagines that you can disappear there, leave who you used to be behind and melt into the throng. It sounds nice. 

“Everything happens for a reason,” her grandmother said at Christmas. “God has a plan, you know that, Karen?” 

Karen kisses Monica in the backseat of her car and figures that God can probably fuck off.

**

Matt never gets confirmed. By the time he would have, they’ve taken him out of the Catholic group home and moved him to foster care somewhere outside of the city. He never stays in one place for very long; it’s, in the social worker’s words, “challenging to find households that are able to accommodate a young person with disabilities long-term.” When she says that, he bites the inside of his cheek until it bleeds to keep from hitting something. He tries not to think about that too much.

There are a lot of things that Matt tries not to think about. He tries not to think about his dad, unless it’s to think about how he was when he was alive. He tries not to think about Stick and the war he claimed was coming but never explained. He tries not to think about what will happen if an adult ever tries to hit him.

Instead, Matt focuses on making his dad proud by doing as well as he possibly can in school, and he prays to Mary and Saint Jude that when push comes to shove he’ll know what he’s supposed to do.

**

When Foggy’s aunt is sick, a dozen different people from the synagogue Foggy’s parents don’t even go to anymore call to see if there’s anything they can do. Foggy thinks that maybe God’s in that.

**

Karen goes to college mostly because she isn’t sure what else to do to get away from home. It’s a place where she mostly flies under the radar – another pretty blonde girl in a sea of pretty blonde girls. She works three different jobs to get through it, since the idea of being dependent on her mother gives her a trapped sort of feeling, like being tangled in sheets in August. Getting in trouble doesn’t come until later, although the road there might start in college – later in life she’ll remember it differently at different times.

Her father passes in her senior year. 

“God decided it was time for him to go,” Karen’s mom says on the phone. 

“No, thirty years of smoking decided it was time for him to go,” Karen retorts. 

Karen writes the words _TAKE ACTION_ on a yellow sticky note and puts it on her desk. It stays with her until she moves to New York, when it gets lost in the chaos of packing.

**

It takes Foggy a couple of months of knowing Matt to start realizing how Catholic he is. Matt doesn’t talk much about religion, and to Foggy’s knowledge he never goes to Mass at the school chapel or anywhere else. But sometimes he goes there on his own, on a weekday afternoon or late at night when no one else is there, just to sit. At first, Foggy thinks he does it just for the quiet, since he can’t see the altar or the candles or read the prayer books in the backs of the pews during services anyway.

He finds Matt there one night when he’s looking for a place to escape a history paper that’s gnawing unwritten at the back of his mind. Matt’s sitting with his cane on his lap, head tilted slightly sideways as if he’s listening to something that Foggy can’t hear. Foggy watches him for a second, suddenly hyperaware of the fact that Matt doesn’t know he’s there. Sometimes, Foggy gets the feeling there are things that Matt doesn’t tell him, something about the way Matt goes a little too quiet or clenches his fist a little too tightly when he thinks that Foggy probably isn’t looking. Foggy’s okay with that, mostly. He knows that things have happened to Matt that are hard to talk about. Still – letting things alone isn’t Foggy’s strong suit. 

“Hey,” he says. “Not writing your paper either?” 

Matt smiles. “I already finished it.” 

Foggy groans theatrically. 

“You fucking nerd,” he says. 

Matt shrugs. “Sorry.” 

Foggy slides in next to Matt on the bench. 

“You wanna go to karaoke night with Tina?” he asks. “I’m thinking I’ll sing Don’t Stop Believin’. It’s going to be awesome.” 

Matt makes a show of trying not to laugh. “As much as I want to hear your – uh – amazing singing, you should probably be working on your paper.” He pokes Foggy on the leg with his cane. 

“Come on, what are you doing sitting here all alone in the dark anyway?” Foggy says.

“Is it dark in here?” Matt asks, but it feels like an evasion. They’re silent for a moment, and Foggy suddenly feels guilty, like an invader. 

“Do you want me to go?” he asks. 

“No,” Matt replies. “I like listening to your voice.” It’s something he usually says to girls. 

“Okay,” Foggy says. He looks around the chapel. All symbols of particular religions or denominations are removed in between services so that students of all backgrounds can feel comfortable coming to worship, and as a result the room is bare and white. The only light is coming from the open door in the back, and the air is full of the lingering scent of incense. Matt is listening again, and Foggy tries to hear what he’s hearing but can’t.

**

Karen dates a Marxist named Peter who tries to tell her that she doesn’t believe in anything. She steals his favorite pair of aviator sunglasses when she walks out on him.

**

Foggy and Matt graduate from undergrad and start law school. Matt sits in class and it seems surreal that he ever learned how to break bones. He thinks about his mother for the first time in years and wonders if God would want him to forgive her. He wonders if God cares what he does at all.

**

Foggy isn’t sure if the fact that Matt clearly doesn’t want to make out or hold hands anymore after undergrad is a Christian thing or just a Matt-thing. He tries not to take it too personally. After all, Matt always panic-quits that kind of relationship the second it gets going, no matter who it’s with. The reason they’ve been able to be so close for so long is because they never really went there. Right?

**

“So, what, you’re just a couple of Good Samaritans?” Karen asks the two strangers sitting across from her. She tries to remember how the Good Samaritan story ended, but it keeps turning into zombie Lazarus in her head.

**

As soon as Karen comes to work with them, it’s like the three of them have always been friends.

“The Three Stooges! Charlie’s Angels! The Holy Trinity!” Foggy jokes, then looks over at Matt like he might be offended, but Matt laughs. 

They watch a movie in Foggy’s office because they have nothing else to do – the first original Star Wars. Matt and Foggy both know it so well from playing it over and over during college that they spend the entire time talking over the audio description, arguing about this or that detail. Karen rests her head on Foggy’s shoulder and puts in her two cents about Greedo. 

“Even I know Han shot first, and I’m a Star Trek person,” she says. 

“Psh, Star Trek’s way less exciting, and there’s no magic,” Foggy replies. 

“Yeah, but, boldly going forward and all that,” Karen says, just as Matt interjects, “It’s not magic.” 

“Space wizards, Murdock. Space wizards! Space wizards!” Foggy chants, and Matt and Karen laugh. 

Outside, there are men with knives and guns and money who could be waiting to hurt them, but in here they’re okay. Foggy thanks whoever might be up there for that.

**

Matt walks into the empty church, running his tongue over his split lip and feeling, for the first time in his life, like he might not belong there. Absolution seems like something huge and far away. Stick would say that religion is an excuse, a way to cling to some sort of illusion of belonging. Matt thinks about Foggy and Karen and Claire. He takes another step forward.

**

“What do you believe in?” Matt asks Karen. They’re sitting in a bench together in the cool late fall air, after everything. She thinks about it for a while.

“I believe in us,” she says. 

Matt listens to her heartbeat, not to find anything out about her. Just to hear it. 

“Is that enough?” he asks. 

“Yeah,” she says. “Sometimes. Should we go meet Foggy?” 

Matt nods and takes her elbow.

**

So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. 

Matthew 10:26-28


End file.
